In Barroso-Aliyev talks, press freedom takes a back seat

"We in Europe are also not perfect," José Manuel
Barroso said last week while
hosting a joint press conference in Brussels with Azerbaijan's head of state,
Ilham Aliyev. The president of the European Commission, who is supposed to
defend the EU's democratic values, seemed to prove his own point by deciding not
to openly question his guest's rosy picture of Azerbaijan's human rights
record.

"Ensuring human rights and fundamental freedoms stands
high in our agenda," said Barroso. In fact,
standing at paragraph 11 out of 15, these rights were raised rather low in the statement
Barroso issued after his meeting with Aliyev. Although briefly referring to
"shared values," the text was dominated by energy issues, and, specifically,
the Southern Gas Corridor--a European Commission project that would help diversify
Europe's gas supply by adding the Caspian and Middle Eastern regions as sources.

If Azerbaijan does not have democracy, it has oil and
gas, which is a very convincing argument for a European Union eager to work
with energy suppliers other than Russia. "We have more than 2 trillion cubic
meters of proven reserves," Aliyev said. "This will
change the energy map of Europe." In a move seen as a way to court the favors
of the country's rulers who aspire for international recognition and prestige,
the European Commission proposed last May the draft of a Strategic
Modernization Partnership with Azerbaijan.

The European Union is not the only European
institution eager to give an easy ride to Azerbaijan. Last year the Eurovision
song festival was held in Baku although the repression of media freedom violated all of the proclaimed lofty principles of the organizer, the Geneva-based
European Broadcasting Union (EBU). And next year the Council of Europe, whose
official mandate is to defend democracy and human rights, will offer its
rotating chairmanship to Azerbaijan.

This soft spot for Baku is contradicted by these
institutions' own assessments of the human rights situation in Azerbaijan.
According to the news website EUObserver, the EU Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Fule was hardly
euphoric. In a letter addressed to German Christian Democratic MEP Elmar Brok,
chairman of the European Parliament Foreign Affairs Committee, he noted that "there
is an overall worsening of human rights in the run-up to elections." According
to EUObserver's Andrew Rettman, "Fule
noted that unlike Armenia or Georgia, Azerbaijan does not care about EU
integration because 'it is self-confident due to its energy reserves.'"

The latest news from Baku does not bode well if the
European Union pretends, in Barroso's words, to "move to a long-term
association grounded in democracy and shared values."

Most recently, on June 20, the U.S. government-funded broadcaster
Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty reported interference
with its signal to Azerbaijan "that could indicate a new level of deliberate
interference, a practice known as jamming, and a violation of international
telecommunications regulations."

CPJ has documented systematic and long-standing attacks
on press freedom in Azerbaijan, that, at best, have remained unaddressed and,
at worst, have been initiated or condoned by the state.

UPDATE: We changed the original version in paragraph five to correct the spelling of Elmar Brok's last name.

CPJ Europe Representative Marthoz is a Belgian journalist and longtime press freedom and human rights activist. He teaches international journalism at the Université catholique de Louvain and is a columnist for the Belgian daily Le Soir.